My local pub is the Prince Regent in Herne Hill, and now that its summer its lovely to sit outside and watch the world go by. It also seems to have the biggest pub sign I have ever seen, but it seems to have worn away. Being obsessed with halftone printing I was wondering what would be a good way of cheering it up.

I found a post tutorial that actually explained how you made the fine engraving effect that money has in photoshop. So I applied this to ‘King George IV by Sir Thomas Lawrence oil on canvas, circa 1814’,which the National Portrait Gallery describes as, “this dashing oil sketch of his head in profile like a Classical god and a large portrait of him in Field Marshall’s uniform. Lawrence’s unfinished profile was intended for a medal which was never struck”

I like the fact that the pubs sign features one of England’s most hopeless royals. There are alot of English princes who whilst waiting for elderly parents to die, and making fools of themselves. The Prince Regent has been played for full comic effect by Rupert Everett as George, the Prince of Wales in The Madness of King George, a complete buffoon in Blackadder the Third played by Hugh Laurie, and in his day James Gillray, ‘A Voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion’. Which the British Museum describes as, “Gillray portrays George, Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent and George IV (reigned 1820-1830), picking his teeth with a table fork, having demolished a heavy meal and a considerable quantity of wine. The Prince was notoriously dissolute and spendthrift.”

Around Herne Hill a lot of new lamp post banners have gone up, by a local south london design agency a Place In Print. They all feature that flat outline style of illustration, that I associate with old fashioned railway posters by Tom Purvis for the LNER, and also the pubs own website has a  flat illustration on it. (The pub could probably get Place to Print to do the illustration and print it in the vinyl they use for the lamp post banners, because its pretty indestructible stuff.)

This led me to think you could use the flat colours of the banners, but with the details being provided by a halftone layer on top, in the style of money engraving. It seems to me to be a happy layering of styles. The engraving providing a little bit of extra detail.

one day they will issue these…